$15HR min. wage will cause Govt assistance & crime to skyrocket (free market, status)
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It's taken me many years to learn how to live frugally. My grandparents lived through the Depression which makes today's economic troubles look like a joke. 25% of people were out of work, and no welfare or unemployment insurance or social security. You literally worked or starved, thus forcing hundreds of thousands of people to live on next to nothing and be willing to uproot their lives and move to where they could make $1/day picking fruit.
Sometimes I think if we eliminated all these safety net programs like unemployment insurance, we'd have full employment, because no one would dare quit their jobs. It's a tradeoff, like anything else, but we've lost some of that edge because of it.
You're right, if we eliminated safety net programs, maybe we could have full employment, like during the Great Depression when 25% of people were out of wor- oh, I guess we already tried that and it worked really poorly.
Did it occur to you that maybe the Depression's economic troubles were so bad as to make ours look like a joke because there were no safety net programs?
China is a joke. Their GDP per capita is less than 1/4 of ours. They walk around with masks because their pollution is so out of hand. The RW propaganda machine is disgraceful.
On top of that, they charge huge tarrifs on imported goods from the US and elsewhere, which of course doesn't help our cause in trying to export any of our goods there. So why do we not charge the same tarrifs on goods FROM china that they charge on goods going INTO China?
On top of that, they charge huge tarrifs on imported goods from the US and elsewhere, which of course doesn't help our cause in trying to export any of our goods there. So why do we not charge the same tarrifs on goods FROM china that they charge on goods going INTO China?
No, an anecdote is an account of an individual's experience. The Depression is not an anecdote but a matter of historical fact. I suggest you read up on both:
All of us are informed by our personal experiences, which are by definition anecdotal. To get to the next level, and know something beyond your own little world, you have to do some reading, preferably non-partisan and non-ideological writings that report the facts as known and accepted by millions of people.
You can take hacks at my post at being ideologically, but I base it on logic and history. History of the Great Depression says everything you are proposing is just a repeat of history. Our social safety nets (unemployment assistance, labor laws, minimum wage) exist as a response to the Great Depression....
How did this cause private universities to raise their tuition?
Reagan did impose higher fees and tuition on public universities in California, true. But that doesn't explain why they have raised their prices much faster than inflation for all these decades.
Actually, one reason for tuition inflation is that federal student loans are so easy to obtain that universities and colleges push the students to max out on borrowing, thus relieving themselves of the need to live on a budget. Unfortunately no one talks about what happens after you graduate (or drop out).
Because its debt fueled and quite obviously the supply thereof is not a simple commodity that can just be supplied to chase rising prices. Demand causes prices to rise. Competition is the only protection. If there is an issue with supply what happens when 2 people want the same thing and want it very badly? If both people only have 10 dollars in their pocket then it can't cost $11. But if da guberment guaranteed loans are added then one might pledge the rest of their lives in debt service.
So unless something is down to restrict demands like raising academic standards or dealing with the prestige pricing of certain schools, more credit will just drive up in price.
Lot of blame to go around but da guberment loan guarantees is certainly one of them.
"Panoramic views"
"located on the green line"
"waterside living"
"located on the banks "
More money made with da guberment guarantees. What meritocracy ?
But people deserve a panoramic view, didn't you know that? It's not enough just to have a roof over your head. It has to be a nice place! So let's raise minimum wage high enough so that they can afford waterside living!
Or, better yet, let some of these bloviaters open their own stores, fast food, or factories, and pay workers what they feel is a fair wage, and leave the rest of us out of it. Liberals - generous with other people's money.
Or, better yet, let some of these bloviaters open their own stores, fast food, or factories, and pay workers what they feel is a fair wage, and leave the rest of us out of it.
There's a fundamental logical fallacy of composition here that I see come up a lot in economics discussions. It's in the best interests of individual actors to pay their workers less. But, it's not in the best interest of those actors for everyone to pay their workers less, because those workers are also consumers. For an individual business, its own workers usually make up a very small portion of their customers, so increasing wages doesn't meaningfully improve their revenue. But for an entire economy, this is flipped around: most of its customers are also its workers, and increasing worker wages does increase revenues correspondingly.
Corollary: this is also why putting macroeconomics questions to businessmen is pointless, despite the common thought that businessmen understand the economy. Understanding the behavior ideal of individuals is very different from understanding the whole economy.
You're right, if we eliminated safety net programs, maybe we could have full employment, like during the Great Depression when 25% of people were out of wor- oh, I guess we already tried that and it worked really poorly.
Did it occur to you that maybe the Depression's economic troubles were so bad as to make ours look like a joke because there were no safety net programs?
Read a little Steinbeck -- not only "The Grapes of Wrath", but "Cannery Row" Times were bad in the Thirties, but the impact was uneven, and there was enough of a local "safety net" (my home state of Pennsylvania had a Poor District and a Poor Tax in every municipality) that nobody actually starved -- save the few eccentrics that rejected all human contact -- and there are still a few around today.
The care and feeding of welfarism and indolence has become a growth industry. A majority of our political hacks (not all of them "progressive" Democrats) vow to fight any attempt to return economic welfare to local control precisely because it would be easy to identify and exclude the "professional slackers" and end the great game.
And the unfortunate fact is that the eclipse of the United States and Canada as the only true economic super-powers means that our industrial payrolls can no longer be "padded" with "soft" jobs reserved for senior union employees. The change to a service-based economy creates a number reasonably well-paying opportunities for people with an engaging personality -- but not everyone relishes a job where a not-always-likeable person is "in your face" for a certain number of hours all day -- every day.
A de-industrialized economy is also an economy which is much more subject to interplay and fluctuation among the quirks of personality which dominate most small enterprises in an office-based setting. Increasing diversity, and a trend as simple and basic as the presence of more women in the workplace allows employers and/or supervisors to play all manner of psychological games, and to discard a strong-willed subordinate more easily.
Nothing is permanent except change -- and change creates losers as well as winners. We all have to deal with it.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 06-10-2014 at 03:58 PM..
I still have yet to see any non-anecdotal evidence of "professional slackers".
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